Life in IT

So here I am again... it's 11:30 on a Tuesday night and I'm wandering around an empty office building while I wait for files to copy.

I've been here before.... too many times to remember let alone count. I figure I probably work 10-20 nights/weekends per year like this. It's a strange place to be...

For those of you who aren't in the IT biz here's a little taste. It's almost midnight and you're still at work. It's not your office though... it's the office of a client... you spend a fair bit of time there, but it's not your space... it's not completely comfortable. You've been working for a good 15 hours... most of the last 5 have been spent waiting... backing up data... restoring data... time consuming, dull as hell. You can't just go somewhere else though since something may go wrong and you'll need to take remedial action. You've passed the point of no return... if this doesn't work (usually by this time you're on method #4 since the first 3 just didn't pan out the way you had intended them to) you know you won't get the system online by the time the staff gets here... you really don't want to see their chipper faces in the morning. All you want to do at this point is to be done. All of your idealistic plans that you were finalizing at 3:00 are no longer important... working is all you really care about.

This is usually the time when I start to wonder why I went into this business... and why, after 15 years, I'm still doing it. I mean, really, what's the best result you can hope for? The absolute best result from a server upgrade is that NONE OF THE USERS REALIZE THAT ANYTHING HAPPENED. That's it... the best I can hope for is that my phone doesn't ring at 7:30 tomorrow morning with someone who wants to know if the Internet is down.

In case you haven't realized, I'm feeling tired and a little low at the moment... I know that when I walk out of here I'll be feeling good... very tired but good. The feeling you get when you know you've done a good job. There's no feeling like that one (especially at 4:00 AM).

I'll be better tomorrow... for now say a quick prayer to the Server Gods and, time permitting, sacrifice a chicken to them. My eternal thanks will be with you for that.